Without a phone for a month, so broke the TalkTalk contract

Phil2008 · 12 Feb 2013 at 22:29

My family just switched from Talktalk to BT because Talktalk left us without any working phone line for a month. But now they're chasing us for £300 for breaking a 3 year contract within the first 2 years. Where do we stand? Surely talktalk have messed up the terms of the contract by not supplying us with the service that the contract is for? My mum had even told them that my dad and sister are ill and we need a phone, as it could be life or death situation.

Doco · 12 Feb 2013 at 22:37

I'd like to say you're right (and I do agree), but as we all know things are never that simple, when you first raised the problem of a non working phone line did they give a rough eta? If they said it's going to take a month eg I can see them being able to skew things in their favour as you were made aware etc, if they said 1 week, then 2 weeks etc and it eventually rolled onto a month with no line I can def. see how you can clai, they "broke the contract" by not supplying the service your still paying for or fixing it within a reasonable timescale etc. hope things work out for ya

(sorry to hear about your father and daughter, hope things get better, looks like you could do with a bit of good fortune

)

imb4tman · 12 Feb 2013 at 22:38

You have to follow the standard complaints procedure before you can cancel. This would include writing a letter listing you grievances and then they have 8 weeks to respond. So as it's only been a month you are still liable.

Merlin5 · 12 Feb 2013 at 23:07

imb4tman said:
You have to follow the standard complaints procedure before you can cancel. This would include writing a letter listing you grievances and then they have 8 weeks to respond. So as it's only been a month you are still liable.

Phil told me that his mum had been in contact several times with those jokers.

He told me "..they have lied from day 1 about the line. First they said it would be fixed within 48hrs. Then not until the 31st" (presumably quite a few days later). "Then someone was fixing it when sis rang up for the 4th time. Then it turns out no one was ever fixing it in the first place.... they were just saying any old ******* to her.." Based on this, I don't see how Talktalk can defend themselves. A disgraceful service leaving the customer with no phone line for an unreasonable amount of time, for which they're actually paying.

Phil2008 · 12 Feb 2013 at 23:12

Doco said:
I'd like to say you're right (and I do agree), but as we all know things are never that simple, when you first raised the problem of a non working phone line did they give a rough eta? If they said it's going to take a month eg I can see them being able to skew things in their favour as you were made aware etc, if they said 1 week, then 2 weeks etc and it eventually rolled onto a month with no line I can def. see how you can clai, they "broke the contract" by not supplying the service your still paying for or fixing it within a reasonable timescale etc. hope things work out for ya (sorry to hear about your father and daughter, hope things get better, looks like you could do with a bit of good fortune )

Well mum rang them up and they said it would be fixed within 48hrs, and then the goal posts just were moving all the time. They even said during 1 phone call, "someones working on it now and the phone should be working during the next few hrs". Then the next day mum rang, someone said "no one was ever working on the line"...

My mum has been lied to from day 1 as everyone she spoke to told her another story........ Ah yeah here's a good 1 to make you giggle, after about the 20th phone call to talktalk they said " we have no idea how long its going to be as its underground"... but they screwed that story up, as the phone lines all above ground in my area

imb4tman said:
You have to follow the standard complaints procedure before you can cancel. This would include writing a letter listing you grievances and then they have 8 weeks to respond. So as it's only been a month you are still liable.

We manage to get a mac code from talktalk so we could move to bt. A few days after we placed a bt package with bt, I decided I would let bt know that the phone line wasnt working, and surprise, surprise, the following day after letting bt know,, they were up the pole at the bottom of our drive fixing it and within 20mins we had lift off again............ Now why rubbish talk talk couldnt fix it in like 30+ days, I'll never know